We'll Be Standing When You're Gone
by skywalker05
Summary: ObiWan remembers what he lost, and regained, as a result of the Jedi purge. Songfic to the Goo Goo Dolls song of mostly the same name.


Disclaimer: The lyrics belong to the Goo Goo Dolls and are "in the public domain". I take no profit from their use. All Star Wars characters, concepts and events belong to Mr. George Lucas. I own nothing of them, no matter how many times I call him Uncle George.

I believe that songfics are best if you listen to the song while reading it. What I have written are, with little revision and extension, exactly what this song gave me.

**The** opening shot is of fire–gold, cascade, red, heat–and he's leaning on the duracrete wall. In the real memory, he walked by with others in clean uniforms like his own, just walking. He ran his hand along the facets of his home for no reason, only to or because he could feel the gritty, lukewarm material against his palm. The sky–blue. In the overlay, the sky's on fire and he's leaning against the wall. He's crying silent tears that burn his face.

_And through the fence I see a ghost  
Of a place that used to breathe  
You know it choked away the sun  
But we still had food to eat _

Jedi always laughed at home. It was greater than others' laughter, because it came from such serious faces. He sees them sometimes; around the blunt corner, in the basement, in a suns-glare, behind the walls where the caves and creatures and cool-of-basement lurks. He hears them babble, senses them, knows their warmth. Familiar faces–Aayla, Mace, Yoda, Siri (sometimes), Shaak Ti, Kit–crowds and Councils appear behind Obi-Wan Kenobi's new walls on Tatooine. He realizes in those quick moments that Qui-Gon was lucky. The love pours out of him (platonic, endless, that of comrades-in-arms) and into an abyss.

He never sees Anakin.

_And now everyone is gone  
To a place that won't be home  
Can they keep their family strong?  
Will they make it on their own?  
_

Sometimes he can't remember why that face will not come into the love. The hovel has become perhaps too comfortable and cool. However, he knows too well the symptoms of tragedy. Writing the pain out serves a double purpose in those times. He reads and sits back, shocked, into his chair which is scratchy with the rug the Jawa traded him. He reads of how _he had seen Anakin's eyes before, and not in Anakin's face_.

The defiance comes quietly, backed by the Force which he first felt at birth._And we'll be standing when you're gone  
And we'll be heard again  
We missed our chance but not for long  
I know somehow we will hold on we'll be here  
When you're gone_

_Then one day we realized  
That they couldn't hear our voice  
And it's so hard to understand  
When it's caught up in the noise_

The fact that the civilians could not feel the Force had never been more apparent than on the day the temple stood empty. It had been an epicenter for a split second, and when Obi-Wan learned what (who) had happened he felt shocked at how no eyes from outside turned, wide, toward him or away in disgust. That lie–he pitied and loathed them for being taken, as a hawk takes a hare, by ignorance and trust. ( The loathing was, he admitted, sometimes mistaken with that directed toward Chancellor Palpatine.)

Noise; that's all the universe was with the Jedi Purge such a clangor in the past.

Until the first time the boy Luke stands on the hillside and watches the sunsset, with pure longing trumpeting out around him.

_But the ones who fight and die  
Are the truth inside the lie  
Now it's all built on our backs  
And we struggle to survive  
_

While it becomes the first of many times, Obi-Wan keeps his hope. He's looking beyond the sunset too.

Eventually, through difficulty and worry which he cannot show, he achieves watching Luke know the Force. He feels, after it has been long dulled, the friendship of combat-companionship. The worry ends; he is a Master again. A bond is only beginning between Luke, Han, Chewbacca, and Leia, but it is beginning. The son of Skywalker will live and learn. Talent shows, even in his uncertain movements which are nonetheless so bold at times. When Obi-Wan stands before Darth Vader (Anakin again) the memories have already washed over him. Clarity ripples in their wake, as does defiance.

_And we'll be standing when you're gone  
And we'll be heard again  
We missed our chance but not for long  
I know somehow we will hold on we'll be here  
When you're gone_

His last thought for a while, before the exultation overtakes him, is a vision. It does not ring true as some of them have, but it is a fantasy only, and it reassures him.

It is the image of a change and a resurgence.

Love feels the same way as he has almost forgotten, the way it felt once with his family who always preached against attachment. The way he remembers; that which would compel any good man to fight for its preservation.

Obi-Wan imagines Luke, a grown man and surrounded by excitable babbling Jedi children. They smile, with eyes and lips one thousand colors, but the Force emanates from them all with that same music.


End file.
